2 new window jobs

I think these will be the last 2 window jobs of the season. It was miserably cold when I painted these, and I don't see it getting any warmer for a while! Glad I got a few jobs in this season. Makes me feel useful. More pics on the window blog.

Days at home

So our weeks go like this: Mondays are joy school days with our neighborhood friends. Tuesday we go to preschool. Wednesday we have music makers. Thursday we have preschool again. Friday is a free day, which tends to fill up quickly with doctor's appointments, visiting teaching, running errands etc. So when we get a totally free day, with nothing required, it's a real treat. Not that we don't enjoy all the activities throughout the week. We definitely do, in fact I tend to prefer to have my time scheduled like that anyway. It's just that "free" days remind me of how much I love being a mostly stay-at-home mom.
On Monday we had the opportunity to attend the Cori Conners concert, a fairly new tradition on the Garner side. Her songs are full of nostalgia and memories. She sings one dedicated to her mother-in-law who passed away and how much she would have loved the sounds and festivities of the season. It made me want to run home and hug my babies. I was so grateful to have 2 beautiful, blonde-headed kids to wake up to the next morning. I was brimming with love, almost to the point of tears as we ate breakfast. We happened to have a free day and Miles had been ACHING to play in the snow. In fact he literally ran out of his room in the morning after waking up, grabbed his snow clothes, and got all ready before breakfast. So we started the process of digging out the snow clothes, realizing what items we did and didn't have, getting dressed, crying over not wanting to wear certain coats/gloves/boots etc, dressing and re-dressing, and about 10 minutes into the process, I was spitting fire. Forget loving my kids, forget my tenderness over breakfast, I was MAD. Why does it have to happen like this? We made it outside and the kids did surprisingly well! Miles was mostly concerned about shoveling the drive way. :) Atta boy.
In addition to a new piano, we received a free tuning! When the lady started taking the piano apart, we were all entranced. I mean, how beautiful is that? She let the kids help her a little until I made them stop so she could actually work. So cool.

The kids helped me decorate the tree. They really don't care about any other decorations, so this may be as far as we get this year. Just getting the tree up was a major effort on all our parts. Call me Scrooge, but I have little to no desire to pull out the last box of Christmas decorations and put them up around the house.
We brought in some snow from outside and let them paint it. This is my idea of playing in the snow. No cold, wet hands and the ensuing fits.
We also made some wrapping paper the other day. The best part was that we used that paper to wrap their sibling gifts in. :) This is the first year we've thought to do this, but they really enjoyed using their own money, going to a store and picking out a toy for each other. They are having a hard time keeping it a surprise from each other and keep asking if it's Christmas yet to open that one present that is theirs under the tree. :)


Speaking of sibling love, how cute it that? They usually watch a movie while I get ready in the morning and when I came out of the bathroom, I found them like this. Swoon! Knowing me, I probably got angry at something they did minutes after taking this picture.

Thanksgiving

We had a fantastic Thanksgiving week. Richie was off work the Wednesday before which allowed me to squeeze in some window painting before leaving later that day. We're still loving the fact that in order to get to St. George we only have to drive 4 hours, as opposed to 8. The kids are pretty darn good travelers, especially if we play our cards right, but 8 hours? C'mon.
This year, the extended Crosby fam all got together to celebrate Grandma Crosby's 90th birthday, in addition to Thanksgiving. Because of the size of our group, we held the actual meal and other meet ups at churches and had the feast catered. The food was good, but we were missing some leftovers when we got home. Luckily our sweet neighbors got sick of eating leftover turkey and brought us 2 bags full. :) I don't think I'm going to attempt getting the pictures lined up with the right captions, but you get the idea right? Henry and all the other cousins were amazing play mates for my kids. Miles cried all of Sunday because he didn't want to leave his friends and St. George. They had so much fun with their cousins, which is such a plus for me in many ways. We watched silly amounts of TV, ate crazy good food, chatted it up with the fam...it's was pretty much everything you'd expect out of a perfect Thanksgiving get together.
My mom has a tradition of having a grandkids sleepover every year after Thanksgiving so that the parents can go out shopping without the kids. Richie and I didn't want to brave any crowds, so we just stuck around the sleepover and got to participate in all the activities. My mom showed them the story of the Berlin Candy Bomber before going to bed on Friday. On Saturday morning, after chocolate chip pancakes, she helped all the kids make parachutes from garbage bags and balsa wood airplanes. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they could have been plenty entertained with those all day. But afterwards, we met up at a tiny airstrip for people who have remote control airplanes to fly. She had arranged for one of the planes to drop tiny candy parachutes as it flew over us. It was a surprise to the kids and the audible gasp when they realized what was happening was priceless. The plane owners even let us "fly" the planes. Miles and Gwen thought that was pretty cool. Thanks mom and dad!
There are small things I hope my kids remember about certain events, or even just a general feeling they get when we take trips like this, but I'm pretty sure that they're small enough not to remember a lot of this. That's why I blog! I hope when they're 27 with kids of their own, they still remember reading the Sunday comics with Grandpa, the M&M candy "machine", making crafts with Grandma, Gwen being in girl heaven with all of Erma's barbies and dress ups, taking baths in the big tub, running around wild with cousins, Miles telling me he's "furious" and then apologizing for being grumpy, and all those other wonderful things. If they don't remember though, at least we've got some documentation here.

New Window Painting

I should have been more diligent about advertising for window painting this past year, but I was glad that I managed to get at least 2 jobs, both of which look like they will be returning customers! I thought maybe after Thanksgiving break, I'd call around to drum up some more business, but now that the snow's here....maybe not. :)
I put the rest of the pictures on the window blog.